Suddenly she was everywhere. All around him, on all sides. She hadn’t moved at all, but her presence was overwhelming, pressing in on him from every direction. In the darkness with her war paint, she was absolutely terrifying, and it took all of his self-control to keep himself from running.
Then the spell broke, and she was just a single person standing before him again.
“Whoa, that’s a neat trick,” he praised, his blood pounding. “Where’d you learn it?”
She held up her hand and made a little ball of cool flame, rolling it around on her fingers playfully. “I could always do it, I just never knew that I could. I’ve learned a lot about myself.”
“I can see that. What happened to you, Phili? Where have you been? What have you been doing? I’ve been worried about you.”
Suddenly she whipped around and drew her bow, searching out into the darkness beyond.
“What’s wrong?”
Storgen couldn’t see anything, but her glowing green eyes carefully scanned each thing, scrutinizing each distant object.
Slowly, she relaxed the tension on her bow spring. “That was strange. I sensed fílos trees. A lot of them.”
“But, there’s no forest here.”
“Yes, that’s why it startled me.”
She turned back to him. “The forest nymph tribe is returning to the old ways. No longer are the forests of the world to be threatened by humans. You and Agaprei burned many trees today. An example must be made.”
“An example?”
Her eyes became pained. “Why do you think I was sent here? Do you think it was just to say hello? The forest sent me here to kill you.”
“Oh.”
Storgen sat there, unsure of what to feel.
“Are you going to do it?”
She looked out at the falling water. “I thought about it for a long time. Believe it or not, I even argued with the forest in favor of granting you mercy, as you were clearly trying to defend yourselves. As you said, the Tower shares the bulk of the blame.”
“I feel like there’s a big ‘but’ coming here.”
Her eyes became stern. “…But the forest does not pardon those who harm it. So, I struck a deal. In return for sparing your life, I have to meet two conditions: First, when I am done, I must leave you and never see you again. So, I guess in a way, what I really came to do was to say goodbye.”
Storgen looked at her sadly. “You’re my best friend. I’ll miss you.”
“And second, I must punish Master Kynigó. It was his agent that harmed the trees.”
“The Tower…”
“You’re going there, right? The Siren asked you to. I can go as well and lend you my strength. I can help you.”
“But, how did you know about that?”
Philiastra pointed to the tree positioned at the center of the gazeebo. “I am the will of the forest. Anything they can hear, I can know.”
“Right, tree, I forgot. But, I’m not sure if I’m taking her to the Tower. I don’t know if I even can.”
“You have to Storge. It would be…unfortunate if you didn’t.”
“Unfortunate? Going back to that hellish place?”
Her eyes became sad. “Because if I cannot punish Master Kynigó, then I will have to punish you and the Siren.”
“Is that what you want?”
“W…what I want is irrelevant. I am the will of the…”
Storgen stood up. “Stop it! This isn’t like you. You’re not some brainless drone. You have a mind and a heart all your own. Now, I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I know my friend, and the Phili I know doesn’t make threats like this, and she doesn’t go around killing people out of revenge.”
“There will always be chaos outside the walls of our own home. The only thing we can do is make peace within ourselves, and with the people we care for.”
“Do you even hear yourself?”
“You made your choice! You chose her over me! My home is the forest, and you are a human. You are a threat to it.”
“Why do I have to choose, huh? Why can’t I care for you both? Why does it have to be one or the other? Can’t I care for my true love and care for my best friend at the same time?”
Her green eyes began to fill with tears. “I’m afraid the ‘human heart’ doesn’t work that way.”
She wiped her cheek. “You have until morning to decide if you are going to the Tower.”
He got up to leave.
“You know Storge, just because you work hard and sacrifice for something, it doesn’t mean you’ll get it.”
She watched him as he walked away.
As soon as he was gone, a shadow fell over her face, and Wei emerged from the tree at the center of the gazeebo.
“So, did he believe you?”
“Yes, he thinks that I am being forced to go to the Tower in order to spare him.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders from behind. “Perfect. He’ll take you right to the stone.”
“I don’t like this. I don’t like lying to him.”
“It’s not wrong to lie when it is in service of the forest.”
“It feels wrong.”
“That’s the pollution of the humans talking. In time, we will purify it from your heart.”
“I guess so.”
“Come, let us link with the forest. That will help with your resolve. You need to feel their anger again.”
“I…I don’t know, I’d rather not right now. My head feels…foggy. I’m having a hard time holding onto who I am.”
“You are the forest, and the forest is you. Your sense of identity as an individual is something you learned to mimic from the humans, it’s not a natural part of who you are.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Listen, I want the forest to forgive you, as I have forgiven you, but not even I can bend the will of so many trees.”
“But, what if we…”
“Listen, that stone is old magic. The forest can bend it, can modify it. We can create a new heart of the forest with it. Our realm will again be protected from hostile magic, as it was before. Only then can we be assured that our children and our grandchildren will not have to suffer the same fate that we did. Our island will be a Dasikí Chará once more.”
She looked down in shame, but he lifted her chin with his green fingers. “And when you present the stone to the forest, you will be forever forgiven.”
He leaned in and kissed her. She squirmed uncomfortably, but he held her tight. Red flame erupted from his hands, spreading into her where they touched. As she resisted, he pulled her back, the two of them melding into the tree and vanishing.
For a moment all was silent, then the air above the roofline shifted, revealing a glassy silhouette that jumped down off the roof.
~
Erolina found Storgen standing at the edge of the plunge pool before a scarlet waterfall.
“There you are.”
“Here I am. I suppose you want to talk now?”
“Not really. I’d much rather spar.”
“Spar?”
She tossed him a quarterstaff. “It’s been a while since I had a good sparring partner.”
She spun her own staff in her hands and readied herself.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Storgen asked, gripping the hardwood. “I’m in a really foul mood right now.”
“Oh, you tease.”
She came at him fast, with multiple spinning strikes that chained off of one another, a whirling dervish that came quicker and quicker each time. He blocked and countered, parried and dodged. She was so fast his eyes couldn’t even keep up, he had to defend himself by pure instinct, allowing his body to react without command or thought. He hooked her lead edge and stepped in close, carving a swing at her legs, but she jumped over it, striking out at him while she flipped upside down in the air before him. Left, high, right, center, low, Storgen blocked each of her attacks, then crossed the center of his weapon with hers, the wood of his s
taff straining as he pushed her away. She flipped in the air like an acrobat, landing on one foot atop a rock at the center of the plunge pool.
“You’re faster than you used to be,” Storgen commented, realizing that at some point she had hit him in the shoulder. He rotated his arm; already the bruised muscle was growing stiff. “And stronger.”
“Maybe I was just holding back before,” she cooed, a damp strand of silver hair falling across her face. “Maybe I’m holding back right now.”
Unable to resist her challenge, Storgen ran at her in a sprint and leapt up into the air. Holding his staff like a giant club, he came down roaring with all his strength. She blocked hard, the wood of her weapon cracking under the strain, then spun her staff, tearing his weapon clean out of his hands and sending it sailing high up into the air.
She swept up fast to crack him in the jaw, but to her surprise, he curled up into a ball, the wooden shaft missing him by a hair’s breadth as he plunged into the waist-deep water.
He rose up almost immediately, just in time to receive a roundhouse kick to the chest. He grabbed her leg with both hands, using her momentum to yank her off her feet. He swung her around and released, sending her flying through the face of the falls with a girly yelp.
She came sloshing out a few moments later, soaking wet, her clothes clinging to her feminine curves.
“Nice. You’ve been practicing,” she praised, wiping her soaking hair out of her face.
Storgen held out his hand and caught his staff as it fell back down to earth.
“Maybe just a little. Phili always hated me training in the quarterstaff. She thinks you gave it to me just to tick her off. Silly, right?”
She readied her weapon. “No, she’s very observant. That’s exactly why I did it.”
“Geez. You girls just operate on a whole other order of magnitude, don’t you?”
“You only realize this now?”
She came at him again, the water rising up in sparkling jets around them as they fought. Her athletic body glistened in the moonlight, the water beading on her silky, dark skin, her red eyes setting alight the crimson waters. She was beautiful in the way a forest fire is beautiful. A whirlwind of destruction, elegant and powerful. A force of nature. A heroine of legend given physical form.
Finally, they both collapsed at the edge of the water, bruised and exhausted, their bodies crying out for air.
“You’re amazing,” she gasped, her eyes sparkling. “No man has ever lasted that long against me.”
Storgen pulled open his drenched chiton, looking at the dozen circular welts covering his muscular chest. “Are you kidding me? If this had been a real fight, you would have killed me like, ten times.”
“Twelve. But this wasn’t a real fight.”
“Lucky me.”
She gave him a warm little smile. “The point was to help you feel better.”
Storgen took a moment to search inside of himself as he gasped for breath. “You know, I do feel a little bit better.”
“See? Beating the crap out of something is always the best therapy.”
He laid down on the shore and gave off a satisfied laugh.
“Hey, we have fun together, right?” she asked, hefting herself up onto the sand.
“I guess so.”
She scratched her arm and leaned back, looking up at the falls, water dripping down her long neck. “Whaddya say we take off together, just you and me?”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “What about the stone?”
“Forget the stone. Forget the whole world. We can go find some quiet little corner where no one will ever find us. Some nice place, where the water is warm and the sky is clear. Where we can rest of the beach and just listen to the waves.”
“That does sound nice.”
“I know, right? You taught me something about myself I never knew. Just like you, I’ve been fighting my whole life, not because I chose to and not necessarily because I enjoyed it, but because I had to. My identity was shaped before I was even old enough to know what that meant.”
“I imagine amazons don’t get a lot of vocational choices.”
She reached up and fondled the locket she wore. “We don’t even get to choose when we have daughters. We are assigned to go find a suitable man and get pregnant as quickly as possible, and then we are expected to come straight back and raise her.”
“That sounds so mechanical.”
“It is.”
She lost herself in thought. “And even the bond between mother and child is reduced to a charge. You train, you instruct, you press and you encourage, but you don’t really connect. There’s no time left for soft things.”
She scratched her cheek and knelt forward, looking down at him, so close their faces nearly touched. “So, let’s change our reality. Let’s go somewhere where we don’t have to fight all the time. I’ve sat and watched people live quiet lives, and you know what? I envy them.”
“We’ll be hunted.”
“You’ve been hunted, and despite your lack of experience, you’re still a free man, right? I’m a seasoned tracker. Think of what I could do. I know every trick, I know every strategy. With me by your side, they’ll never get within ten thousand miles of sniffing us out. We’ll vanish like smoke in the wind. They’ll lose track of us so completely they’ll assume we’re long dead. And then you and I can attempt something we’ve never tried before.”
“What’s that?”
She stood up and reached out towards the moon. “We can find out what it really means to be alive. We were both born into a cage, you and I. We did what we had to do to survive, but we had about as much control over our lives as a leaf in a river. Even now, our actions, our path, our thoughts are almost entirely controlled by the currents of others. And you know what? I realize that I’m sick of it. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I have no idea who I really am. Not really. I see that now. It is something I learned from you.”
She scratched her leg and held out her hand. “I am asking you to come with me, and together we can find out who we really are inside, to discover what it’s like to be in control of our own destinies. This is a wide vast world full of wonders. Let’s go see and hear and taste and feel and experience them all.”
Storgen stared at her hand longingly. “You know, there is a part of me that would love nothing more than to journey with you. You are so passionate about life, it’s positively infections.”
“But you can’t, can you?”
He shook his head. “I can’t just abandon the people I care about.”
“Even if they’re using you?”
“If someone I care about needs something to be happy, then yes, I want to help them.”
She turned away, trying to hide the regret in her eyes, the skin on her elbow growing red from her scratching. “You know, just because you love someone, it doesn’t mean they’ll love you back.”
“I know that.”
“So, how can you be so unflinchingly loyal to them?”
He looked at her honestly. “Because THAT is my purpose.”
She sighed. “I knew that would be your answer. It’s one of the things I like about you. But, you can’t blame me for trying, right? I mean, after all, it didn’t work last time I tried it, either.”
“Erolina…If I didn’t have a destiny, I would take you up on your offer.”
“Well, I suppose that makes me feel a little better.”
“But I do have a destiny.”
“You know, love is abundant, love is everywhere. It might even be right in front of you. You don’t have to go looking for it in a dry well.”
“Are you calling Agaprei a dry well? Besides, I thought you didn’t believe in love.”
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t, but I know you do. And that’s why I’m going to help you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to pressure me into going back to the Tower?”
“Nope. No pressure. But, if you do go back, I swear I’ll make sure y
ou get out of there alive.”
“You know, I was wrong about you. Under all of that pride, you do have a good heart.”
She blushed deeply. “I don’t deserve your praise. But…thank you, it is very sweet of you to say that.”
“Are you blushing?”
“NO.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
“Shut up.”
He chuckled and reached into his pocket. “Here, I made this for you back on the ship, but I never got a chance to give it to you.”
She caught it in her hands and inspected it. Carved from a piece of driftwood, it was a smooth, egg-shaped locket with a relief in the shape of a scythe. When she opened the simple leather hinge, she found inside a tiny portrait painted directly onto the wood. It was her, sitting on the prow of the steamship, looking out into the distance. There was a vulnerability in her expression, a sadness and a loneliness, balanced by discipline and strength.
“This is…me.”
“Sorry I snuck up on ya like that, but I thought if you knew I was there, you’d change your expression.”
She traced her fingers along the small painting. “It’s beautiful…”
She looked up and gave him a playful smile. “I’ve never belonged to a human before.”
“Wait, what?”
“Well, that’s what it means, right? When a human male gives a lady a piece of jewelry, it means he claims her as his own.”
“That is not what it means!”
“Please, be gentle with me. I’m not sure if my heart is ready, but it’s okay if it’s with you.”
“Enough!”
She laughed brightly. “I’m just kidding. Boy, you are so much fun to tease.”
Suddenly she winced, her hand cramping up, the locket falling from her hand.
“Are you okay?”
She forced her cramped fingers to uncurl, reaching down and scooping up the locket again. “I’m fine. I just forgot to stretch before, and the cold water…Ughhh.”
Her thigh cramped hard, nearly bringing her to her knees.
“You are not fine.”
She forced her leg to straighten, but then nearly doubled over with pain. “I am, I’m okay…I just need to get some fresh air.”
She took a pained step, her breath ragged. She groaned hard, then forced another step.
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